In the resurgence of interest in inheritance flows following the publication of Piketty’s work, little attention has been paid to the affective practices that ensure the success of inheritance processes as wealth moves down generations of dynastic families. This article explores these practices, drawing on research among wealth managers, philanthropy advisors, family offices and their clients, to show how philanthropy is promoted by advisors to the wealthy as a tool to support inheritance and family business succession planning. In this process, advisors draw on the philanthropic imagination to style wealthy families as custodians of both private capital and the common good, thus mirroring the narratives used by philanthrocapitalists to legitimise their wealth in the public sphere. Here, however, the discourse of philanthrocapitalism is turned inwards to the private realm of the family, to persuade younger generations to rally around the collective project of the custodianship of wealth. By bringing together research on philanthropy and inheritance, this article contributes to the growing sociological literature on elites and the global inequalities driven by their accumulation of wealth. It shows how wealth accumulation is increasingly dependent not only on the mechanics of financial markets and inheritance flows, but also on affective wealth management strategies framed around ethical notions of kinship and social responsibility.

This article examines the role played by philanthrocapitalist foundations in impact investing for international development, focusing on the covid-19 Vaccines Global Access Initiative (covax) as a response to the current pandemic. Philanthrocapitalists and development institutions are increasingly turning to “blended finance” and “social bonds” to address the gaps in funding required to meet global development agendas, particularly in the arena of global health. These impact investing mechanisms deploy public or philanthropic money to leverage for-profit investment in development, by “de-risking” (providing guarantees for) interventions that might otherwise put private capital at risk. Via covax, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has platformed a pandemic response centred on this approach, resisting alternative responses – such as the proposal for a temporary waiver to pharmaceutical patent rights – that seek to challenge the prevailing trade architecture. The global policy response to covid-19 thus accelerates the “financialization” of development and cements the role of philanthropy in “de-risking” for-profit impact investment.

Anthropological interest in critical studies of class, system, and inequality has recently been revitalized. Most ethnographers have done this from “below,” while studies of financial, political, and other professional elites have tended to avoid the language of class, capital, and inequality. This themed section draws together ethnographies of family wealth transfers, philanthropy, and private sector development to reflect on the place of critique in the anthropology of elites. While disciplinary norms and ethics usually promote deferral to our research participants, the uncritical translation of these norms “upward” to studies of elites raises concerns. We argue for a critical approach that does not seek political purity or attempt to “get the goods” on elites, but that makes explicit the politics involved in doing ethnography with elites.

Drawing on ethnographic research on philanthropy within a Brazilian family business, this article proposes a “critical ethnography” of wealth elites. This family’s narrative of historical commitment to social responsibility is crucial to the success of delicate succession processes within the family firm. By insuring the reproduction of the wealth and status of elite families, such business succession processes serve in turn to maintain the structural inequalities shaping Brazilian society. In this family’s account of its past, however, a series of very different activities— rooted in philanthropy, corporate social responsibility (CSR), labor legislation, and commerce—are collapsed within a single, coherent narrative of historical commitment to social responsibility, which sits at odds with alternative versions of this history presented by sources outside the family.